Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Voltron of Transportation

My good friend Mike who blogs now over at Transit Miami sent me this link about Boston looking to combine all of their transportation agencies into one super agency. I'll leave it to Bill to say whether this is a good idea or not but I don't think super agencies feel like they have to serve the needs of the transit constituency.

9 comments:

Bob R.
said...

That is absolutely NOT FAIR.

The city of Portland just changed the transportation office's name to the "Bureau of Transportation" (BOT or PBOT), and I've had this idea to make a big robot poster, a giant Transformer made up of bikes and streetcars.

Seriously, I just hatched the idea earlier this week -- and now someone has made a big robot poster for their own transportation agency! Even worse, they actually did theirs whilst mine is still just an idea.

Darn you simultaneous invention! Darn you self-motivation and initiative!

Bob...I hope you're not serious. You must know Voltron is a cartoon from the mid 80s from which the posted picture came from. My buddy Mike sent me a link that said Voltron with lots of exclamation points and like any child of the 80's the cartoon came to mind. PBOT can still come to fruition under your logo idea!

As a longtime follower of Massachusetts' transportation woes, I have to say that this idea is a good one. Right now, there are 4 entirely separate state agencies in charge of state roads in MA: the Department of Conservation and Recreation (a bunch of "parkways", many of which are major commuter arteries), the Port Authority (one bridge, albeit a big one), the Turnpike Authority (the Massachusetts Turnpike and the Big Dig tunnels) and the Highway Department (everything else). All of these have entirely separate and redundant bureaucracies, and extremely limited accountability. The Senate proposal eliminates the Turnpike Authority and brings it and all of the other roads under one roof. The new agency would have a separate division for the MBTA and the other regional transit authorities. Things such as pensions, benefits, hiring and contracting policies etc. are currently set by the authorities independently; this would make them the same as the rest of the state government (i.e. a lot less generous; the T's pension policies are particularly ludicrous).

This might be a good idea for Boston. The previous governor saddled the MBTA with boatloads of debt and restricted its funding stream. (Not so for the roads authorities.) The combination could dump the debt on the roads folks and send the income to transit, if done correctly.

I'm transitioning my writing over to my other site which was previously called The Direct Transfer. People seemed to be confused by the differences in brand between The Overhead Wire and The Direct Transfer so I made a change and combined the two as The Overhead Wire.

This page will continue to be here and will still be updated sparingly as it has over the last few years, however new original analysis and writing will be featured at TheOverheadWire.com in addition to the news archive and The Overhead Wire Daily email.